NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Data scientists have begun betting on the use of machine learning, deep learning, Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help in the early detection of diseases and advance healthcare. Leading the way on the road to healthcare analytics are the world’s five largest medical device companies—Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, Siemens, Medtronic and Philips Healthcare.

In the case of Dutch electronics, healthcare and lighting company, Philips NV, much of such innovative work is being done at the Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in Bengaluru. PIC, according to the centre’s chief executive Srinivas Prasad, initially started as a software centre in 1996, and has now developed into a product engineering site with a focus on delivering innovations for local and global markets.

“Engineers and domain experts work on end-to-end products and solutions across the health continuum, from healthy living, to prevention, diagnosis and treatment. PIC is harnessing the power of technologies such as mobile, digital, cloud and Big Data analytics to improve patient outcomes through care coordination and patient empowerment. PIC takes pride in developing solutions to make healthcare affordable and accessible in India and other growth geographies like Africa and Indonesia,” said Prasad.

Philips, he added, provides a data science development environment where data scientists can do exploratory and predictive analysis on the data. The models thus created in this environment can be put in production. About 40-50% of the employees at this centre “focus on next-gen solutions”, according to Prasad.